In this respect, Artemis’s methodology was similar to that of American chess master Bobby Fischer, who was capable of computing every possible move an opponent could make so that he could counteract it. The only problem with this technique was that there were some scenarios that Artemis simply could not face, and these had to be shuffled to the end of his process, rendering it flawed.
And so he plotted, realizing that it was probably futile, as he did not know most of the constants in this equation, not to mention the variables.
A dark promise drifted below the surface of his logic.
If my loved ones are harmed, then Opal Koboi shall pay.
Artemis tried to banish the thought as it served no useful purpose; but the notion of revenge refused to go away.
Holly had only a few hundred pilot hours logged in the Cupid, far too little for what she was attempting. But then again, there weren’t enough pilot hours in a lifetime for this kind of driving.
The Cupid sped along the canal, its chunky tires finding purchase in the Plexiglas trough, the tiny rocket disguised as an exhaust pipe boiling a short-lived wake in the smart-water. Suitcases were crushed under its treads or popped like mortars along the belt’s scoop, showering those below with fluttering garments, cosmetics, and smuggled human memorabilia. The security guards on duty had had the presence of mind to confiscate most of these artifacts, but nobody ever figured out who had managed to stuff a life-sized Gandalf cardboard cutout into a suitcase.
Holly drove on, concentrating through squinted eyes and gritted teeth. The luggage canal took them out of the terminal into bedrock. Upward they spiraled through archaeological strata, past dinosaur bones and Celtic tombs, through Viking settlements and Norman walls, until the Cupid emerged in a large baggage hall with a transparent roof that opened directly to the elements—a real James Bond supervillain–lair kind of place, complete with spidery metallic building struts and a shuttle rail system.
Generally, the Sky Window would be camouflaged using projectors and shields; but these security measures were out of commission until all Koboi parts could be replaced with technology that hadn’t exploded. On this afternoon, bruised Irish rainclouds drifted across the beveled panes, and the baggage hall would be completely visible from above if anyone cared to photograph the fairy baggage handlers or forklift trucks that stood with smoking holes in their bodywork, as though the victims of a sniper.
Holly asked the computer whether there was another way out besides the one it was suggesting. The onboard avatar informed her dispassionately that indeed there was, but it was three hundred miles away.
“D’Arvit,” muttered Holly, deciding that she wasn’t going to worry about rules anymore, or property damage. There was a bigger picture to consider here, and nobody likes a whiner.
Nobody likes a whiner. Her father had always said that.
She could see him now, spending every free minute in his precious garden, feeding algae to his tubers under the sim-sunlight.
You have to do your share of the housework, Poppy. Your mother and I work long hours to keep this family going. He would stop then and stroke her chin. The Berserkers made the ultimate sacrifice for the People long ago. Nobody’s asking you to go that far, but you could do your chores with a smile on your pretty face. He would stiffen then, playing at sergeant major. So hop to it, Soldier Poppy. Nobody likes a whiner.
Holly caught sight of her reflection in the windshield. Her eyes brimmed with melancholy. Daughters had always carried the nickname Poppy in her family. No one could remember why.
“Holly,” barked Artemis. “Security is closing in.”
Holly jerked guiltily and checked the perimeter. Several security guards were edging toward the Cupid, trying to bluff her with useless Neutrino handguns, using the smoking hulk of a flipped shuttle for cover.
One of the guards snapped off a couple of shots, dinging the front fender.
A custom weapon, Holly realized. He must have built it himself.
The shots had little effect on the Cupid’s plates. But if the guard had gone to the trouble of cobbling together his own backup pistol, perhaps he had thought to bolt on an armor-piercing barrel.
As if reading her mind, the guard fumbled at his belt for a clip of ammunition.
That’s the difference between me and you, thought Holly. I don’t fumble.
She switched all power to the jets and sent the Cupid rocketing toward the Sky Window, leaving the security guards pretending to fire useless weapons at her, a couple even going so far as to make bang bang noises, though fairy weapons hadn’t gone bang bang in centuries.
The Sky Window is reinforced Plexiglas, thought Holly. Either it breaks, or the Cupid does. Probably a bit of both.
Though she would never know it, Holly’s gamble would not have paid off. The Sky Window was built to withstand direct impact from anything short of a low-yield nuclear warhead, a fact that was proudly announced over the terminal’s speakers a hundred times a day, which Holly had somehow managed to avoid hearing.
Luckily for Captain Short and her passengers—and indeed the fate of much of the wider world—her potentially fatal ignorance would never come to light, as Foaly had anticipated a situation where a fairy craft would be heading at full speed for the Sky Window and it would refuse to open. The centaur had also guessed that, because of the universal law of maximum doo-doo displacement—which states that when the aforementioned doo-doo hits the fan, the fan will be in your hand and pointed at someone important who can have you fired—the Sky Window would probably refuse to open at a crucial time. And so he had come up with a little proximity organism that ran on its own bio-battery/heart, which he had grown from the stem cells of appropriated sprite wings.
The whole process was dubious at best and illegal at worst, and so Foaly hadn’t bothered to log a blueprint and simply had the sensors installed on his say-so. The result was that a cluster of these proximity beetles scuttled along the Sky Window pane edges, and if their little antennae sensed a vehicle drawing too close to a certain pane, they excreted a spray of acid on the window and then quickly ate the pane. The energy required to complete their task in time was massive, and so when the beetles were finished, they curled up and died. It was impressive; but, pretty much like the man with the exploding head, it was a onetime trick.
When the beetles sensed the Cupid’s ascent, they rushed into action like a minute company of cavalry and devoured the pane in less than four seconds. When their job was done, they winked out and dropped like ball bearings onto the vehicle’s hood.
“That was easy,” Holly said into her microphone, as the Cupid passed through a Cupid-shaped hole. “So much for Foaly’s great Sky Window.”
Ignorance, as they say, is usually fatal, but sometimes it can be bliss.
Holly powered up the Cupid’s shield—though with every single human satellite out of commission she really needn’t have bothered—and set a course for Fowl Manor.
Which gives us about five minutes before Opal has us exactly where she wants us.
A less-than-comforting thought, which she did not voice—but all it took was a glance in the rearview mirror at Butler’s expression to see that the bodyguard was thinking more or less the same thing.
“I know,” he said, catching her eye. “But what choice do we have?”
Irish Airspace
Opal could not have turned her face from the lock now if she had put all her enhanced pixie might to the task. She was the key, and the two were paired. Their collision was as inevitable as the passage of time. Opal felt the skin on her face stretch toward the lock, and her arms were pulled until the sockets creaked.
The elfin warlock was indeed powerful, she thought. Even after all this time, his magic holds.
Her trajectory took her in a regular arc to the Atlantic’s surface and across the afternoon sky to Ireland. She descended like a fireball in a slingshot toward the Fowl Estate, with no time to wonder or worry about—or, for that matter, revel in—the
imminent proof of her theories.
I will raise the dead, she had often thought in her cell. Even Foaly cannot make that boast.
Opal hit the Fowl Estate like a comet come to Earth, directly on the worn nub of the Martello tower, with its alien creeping vine. Like a dog snuffling after a bone, her corona of magic destroyed the tower and cleared a crater for itself, spiraling twenty feet down, past centuries of deposit, revealing another more ancient tower below. The magic sniffed out the roof lock, settling over it like a shimmering man-o’-war.